Contents

Lore

Biography

When the prophet Malzahar was reborn in Icathia, he was led there by an ominous voice which thereafter anchored itself to his psyche. From within, this voice bestowed upon him terrible purpose, and though Malzahar was no longer tormented by its call, the voice did not cease its unrelenting summons. This baleful beacon's gentle flicker - now fastened to Runeterra - drew forth a putrid beast that ambled across a threshold it did not understand, widening a fissure between the spaces which were never meant to meet. There amongst the haunting ruins of Icathia, Kog'Maw manifested in Valoran with unsettling curiosity. The spark which led him to Runeterra teased him still, urging him gently towards Malzahar. It also encouraged him to familiarize himself with his new environment, to the stark horror of everything he encountered on his journey.

The enchanting colors and aromas of Runeterra intoxicated Kog'Maw, and he explored the fruits of the strange world the only way he knew how: by devouring them. At first he sampled only the wild flora and fauna he happened across. As he traversed the parched Tempest Flats, however, he came upon a tribe of nomads. Seemingly unhampered by conventional rules of physics, Kog'Maw consumed every nomad and any obstacles they put in his way, amounting to many times his own mass and volume. The most composed of his victims may have had time to wonder if this was due to the caustic enzymes which stung the ground as they dripped from his gaping mouth, although such musings were abruptly concluded. Even this feeding frenzy did nothing to satiate Kog'Maw's appetite. His swathe of destruction continues still as he is inexorably drawn towards Malzahar. What happens when he finds him is anyone's guess.

Active: Deals Magic Damage to enemies it passes through and leaves a trail on the ground for 4 seconds, briefly slowing enemies in it.

Magic Damage: 60 / 105 / 150 / 195 / 240 (+50%)

Slow: 20 / 28 / 36 / 42 / 50%

Living Artillery

[R]

Cost: 40 Mana + 40 per cast

Cooldown: 2 / 1.5 / 1 second(s)

Range: 1200 / 1500 / 1800

Area of Effect: 100

Active: Fires an artillery shot, dealing magic damage increasing by up to 50% at 60% missing health, and revealing them for 2 seconds. The cost of subsequent shots within 8 seconds increases by 40 Mana.

Back during the Marksman Update, we shifted Living Artillery to be more about executing enemies as they back off, rather than a primary damage tool in its own right. Now that Kog’Maw’s back to his old kiting/spellweaving ways, he’s frequently casting his ult (and stacking its mana cost) while foes are well above the execution thresholds. This leaves Living Artillery feeling pretty lackluster. So, we’re re-tuning it to fit better into Kog’s new (old?) playstyle while holding on to some of the spicy execution feeling we gained from the Marksman Update.

Getting this out of the way: we don’t have buffs for Kog this patch, and that’s why he’s at the bottom (your winrate joke goes here). Reverting an update after it’s settled is really a new update in itself, so we expected Kog’Maw’s performance to drop while players re-adjust to the attack speed cap. We’re holding off on the (im)balanced call until he stabilizes, since hasty changes now will just incur more adjustments down the road.

That aside, Bio-Arcane Barrage’s visuals felt pretty out of place with the changed functionality. We’ve fixed them up!

Let’s start with the bottom line: Kog’Maw’s being partially reverted to his pre-2016 status. While we’ve had champions that take a couple of passes to get right (...Ryze), this is the first time we’ve actually gone back on a Champion Update. To understand how we got here, let’s take it all the way back to last year’s pre-season.

Our goal for the Marskman update was to create strategic identities for them outside of ‘who does the most damage’. What does each marksman do that their classmates don’t? Kog’Maw already had an answer to that question: be the glass cannon, demanding an entire team’s resources to support. So rather than create a distinct identity, we took a different approach: sharpen the one he already had. If ‘glass cannon’ was cool, could we push things further and make a ‘glass turret’?

10 months and 5 attacks per second later, how did that shake out? Well, Kog’s gameplay has actually moved away from the niche he previously filled. Transforming into an immobile turret is certainly unique, but it creates a ‘feast or famine’ situation. Kog can’t move between attacks in the late game, so either he mows down everyone in range, or enemies walk to safety since Kog can't keep pace. Compared to the consistent payoffs of old-school ‘Jugger-Maw’ comps, playing with today’s Kog’Maw feels too hit-or-miss.

As an aside, new Kog's created some warping effects on the items system. Specifically, on-hit items (Rageblade, Wit’s End, even Skirmisher’s Sabre) are balanced with the attack speed cap in mind, and Kog'Maw's pushing the strength of these effects past their designs. This puts heavy restrictions on the item system, all to support a single champ.

All said, we’re left with two choices - continue to make concessions toward Kog’Maw’s ‘glass turret’ ideal, or hit the reset switch to a stabler (though still imperfect) Kog. The updated kit's moved too far from what made Kog’Maw special, so we opted for the latter. This transition may be choppy, as many of League’s underlying systems have changed since Kog'Maw's update, but we’ll be monitoring how he readjusts and make any changes necessary to support him.

General

BASE ATTACK SPEED :[0.625]⇒ 0.665

ATTACK SPEED GROWTH STAT :[3.5%]⇒ 2.65%

Q - Caustic Spittle

BONUS ATTACK SPEED : Now grants 15/20/25/30/35% attack speed

W - Bio-Arcane BarrageW no longer doubles Kog’s attack speed or the attack speed cap, but deals more max health per hit, has a higher range early, and lasts longer.

ULTRA RAPID KOG’MAW No longer doubles Kog’Maw’s attack speed, increases his attack speed cap to 5.0, or decreases his cast times by 50%

When last we joined Kog’Maw on his adventures through patch notes, we spoke a lot about giving hypercarries a more even power curve than just ‘great late, awful early.’ These changes are furthering that philosophy, letting Kog feel like he gets to have a Q and reining in his insane power spike.

Q - Caustic Spittle

ARMOR/MR SHRED :[12/16/20/24/28%]⇒ 20/22/24/26/28%

W - Bio-Arcane Barrage

BASE ON-HIT DAMAGE :[10/15/20/25/30]⇒ 4/8/12/16/20

v6.5Attack speed per level up. Q cost down. W has a base damage, but no longer grants any attack speed per rank.

Before we talk 6.5, let’s talk about how we got here.

Kog’Maw’s identity is one of the clearest we have in league - a baby voidling that if sheltered and protected, grows into a hyper-carrying win condition all his own. Historically this has been done through balancing his laning phase to a state where it’s nearly impossible to withstand aggression, given that the rewards for succeeding were that you’d have an extremely powerful Kog’Maw on your team. Cut to the Marksman Update for Preseason, and now Kog has an additional tradeoff for his power - specifically ‘can you engineer a fight such that he can stand still and obliterate everything in sight’. Granted, the tradeoffs between high damage and mobility isn’t actually ordinary for a Marksman - they usually kite and fight simultaneously. Understandably, the early days of Kog’Maw’s update were a rough learning time for us all. We had a glass cannon that was all glass and no cannon.

So we thought, ‘If he’s not performing, let’s give him some love in a way that boosts his laning phase!’ That was 6.3. Terror ensued.

Back in the present, we’re looking to make a sustainable Kog’Maw for the long-term, free from the binary teeter-totter of ‘really strong or really weak’ that hypercarries tend to fall into. The changelist below represents a shift in thinking about Kog’s power curve - he’ll still scale incredibly with items, but that curve is now more even across the game (rather than spiking at any one particular point). Smoothing this curve means that Kog’s lane can be in a state that’s relatively normal compared to his peers, but the ‘race against the clock’ should feel less harsh for those that fall behind. Kog’Maw may always be the posterchild for what the term ‘hyper-carry’ means in League of Legends, but the hope is for that term to extend beyond just ‘bad lane, great late game’ and into meaningful interactions between the champions and their environments.

General

ATTACK SPEED GROWTH STAT :[1.5%]⇒ 3.5%

Q - Caustic Spittle

COST :[60 mana]⇒ 40 mana

W - Bio-Arcane Barrage

SPITSTORM No longer gains attack speed passively

LET’S TRY THAT AGAIN : Now deals 5/10/15/20/25 additional base damage on-hit (instead of a minimum of 15 damage)

Since easing up on his laning-phase leash in 6.3, Kog'Maws taken revenge on his oppressors in a truly gruesome fashion. None would disagree Kog needs to be toned down, but let's go in-depth on the tactics. Toning down his attack speed might seem counterintuitive considering he's supposed to be a cute, corrosive machine-gun, but it's all about creating windows of power that are more nuanced than 'strong all the time.' Striking his core stat pushes Kog'Maw to be more careful around how he manages Bio-Arcane Barrage's uptime, as he'll be much less of a face-melting menace without it. Final note: you can consider this a two-part changelist as we dive deeper in 6.5 to see how we can get Kog to feel good about his abilities (Q and R in particular) when he's not right clicking and standing still.

General

BASE ATTACK SPEED :[0.665]⇒ 0.625

v6.3Q's attack speed passive shifted to W. W now has a minimum damage.

Now the definition of 'Glass Cannon' in League, Kog'Maw finds himself a little too brittle to get out of lane and into a state where he can aim for a high-scaling fantasy. The primary goal is to clean up Kog's rank-ups to feel less like a trap and help him smooth out that transition from 'free kill botlane' to 'hyper-vomit omnicarry' without just handing him a free pass. (Trivia: did You Know that previously ranking W gave you no increase in damage? Sorry about that.)

Kog’Maw’s the same vomit-happy hypercarry he’s always been, but the update went too far in removing base damages from his kit. What we end up with is a Kog that’s incredibly hard to stop once he gets going, but lacking in the tools to get there reliably. Removing the ratio and reinstating the base does trim Kog’s highs, but gives him an expected damage floor to tap into when he’s not consuming everything.

When someone says Kog'Maw, the word 'hypercarry' is never far behind. Already one of the most strategically distinct marksmen, we're pushing him above and beyond - disregarding the attack speed cap, the enemy's composition, and even their feelings. Power does come at a price however, so while Kog is busy spewing acid (and whatever else) onto his foes he's unable to budge without giving up his unparalleled damage stream. A well-protected Kog'Maw will bring down anyone, anywhere, but leave him out to dry and he's just another Kog in the machine.

"Despite our changes in 4.13, Kog'Maw still has few weaknesses for his ultra-powerful late game identity. Since our goal is to to preserve a champion's strategic strengths even as we reduce power, we started with Kog's core weaknesses (low mobility) before tackling his early game strengths."

General

BASE MOVEMENT SPEED330 ⇒ 325

E - Void Ooze

WHEN DID YOU EAT THAT, KOG'MAW Has new particles, looks more gross

R - Living Artillery

BONUS BASE MAGIC DAMAGE TO CHAMPIONS125% ⇒ 100%

v4.13Kog's got less base health and his Q shreds less armor / MR at lower ranks

"When we made our AD itemization changes back in 4.10, Kog'Maw got significantly stronger on top of his already strong base kit. We still want Koggles to hit his late game power, but in order to get there he needs to have a real weakness in the early to mid game. As a quick rundown on why these changes specifically: Kog's current favored item build (Trinity Force + Blade of the Ruined King) lets him build more utility / tank than traditional Infinity Edge marksmen, but he can still deal tons of damage with Q's high base shred + W's damage amp. Now he'll just take a little longer to hit that level of effectiveness."

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